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The iOS home screen has essentially been unchanged since it was introduced in 2007 (7 years ago). Apart from the ghastly thematic change last year, its UI has not budged. Maybe its time evolve a little?

1. Get rid of the 'click-hold' to switch the context to the jiggling icons, indicating you can rearrange them on the screen. My suggestion would be to:
a)'click-hold' enables an app to be moved around . letting go, drops it in the location.
b)'click-hold' and drag past the top/bottom of the screen triggers a delete confirmation.
This alleviates the context switch and the need to press the home button when done.

2. The app icons and the grid are too rigid/concrete. My suggestions:
a) enable variable size app icons (with a min/max defined). Overflow moves to the 'next' screen. The pinch to zoom on the home screen lets users determine the size of the icons are the corresponding grid dimensions.
b) past the minimum app icon size, the layout switches to a list view of all apps (which can also be re ordered).

3) The constant scrolling through pages is cumbersome and slow. A better way to organize and navigate to apps needs to be thought about. The problem seems akin to the original MacOS1 which didnt support folders and everything was on a flat level. The 'tree' structure of filesystems alleviated that, but it needs to be improved upon for mobile.). The current folders implementation is good, but it is essentially just 'one more' level of depth to the tree.

4) People are creating content on these devices, be they documents, pictures, movies, sound memos, etc..... there's got to be a better way to move that around, both within the system and out of the system, instead of being tethered to the internet (email and the cloud) or having to deal with the way iTunes makes it possible.

I guess, given the power of these devices and the sophistication of the graphic APIs that come with the OS, i think we need to see a more sophisticated UI (not just thematic changes) that builds upon what we have and reduces the 'number of clicks' to do something within the OS and making it easier to use.

1) having an "Edit mode" for home screens is fine. This is not something I need accessible more than once for any newly installed app. Having a permanently editable home screen is not useful IMO.

2) just having two fingers on the home screen is enough to resize icons? That's a terrible idea. Unless you're advocating a home screen "edit mode", which is what we have now (see point 1). I see no point in resizable icons, but the widget discussion has been done to death.

3) I have well over a hundred apps on my iPhone, and haven't quite filled two screens. I don't scroll back and forth much at all - I've just put a lot of thought into organizing things.

Six are gimmick apps - Rotary Dialer, Lightsaber, that stuff.
Twelve are "emergency" games for my daughter.
Nine are apps I've downloaded but haven't decided I want to keep yet.
Three of the stock apps are in a "Crap" folder.
And one is a temporary programme app that will be deleted again after the Elbjazz Festival.

1) having an "Edit mode" for home screens is fine. This is not something I need accessible more than once for any newly installed app. Having a permanently editable home screen is not useful IMO.

Why is it fine? There are two 'functions' in edit mode; moving and deleting apps. And i have presented ways in which they can be accomplished without a 'context switch'. So what functional or aesthetic purpose does the second context have? It is superfluous, ugly and most importantly not user friendly.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

2) just having two fingers on the home screen is enough to resize icons? That's a terrible idea. Unless you're advocating a home screen "edit mode", which is what we have now (see point 1). I see no point in resizable icons, but the widget discussion has been done to death.

iPhone have come with multitouch support since the beginning, yet none of the OS's/System's UI seems to utilize it. Why is resizing the icons with 'pinch to zoom', on the home screen a terrible idea? People do it with almost every app that supports zooming/scaling. In the 'Pictures' app, Safari, Mail, etc.... there's no 'edit' mode when you want to zoom/scale, why force this 'special'/'exception' on the system?

Well, if you see no point for resizable icons, doesnt mean that everyone else who uses the product is of the same persuasion. And considering u seem to be content using the home screen with one finger, you wouldn't even notice or evoke it. (And if you did, you would hve to switch contexts several times to get back to what you prefer).

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

3) I have well over a hundred apps on my iPhone, and haven't quite filled two screens. I don't scroll back and forth much at all - I've just put a lot of thought into organizing things.

It's great that you took the time to squeeze your 100 apps onto a couple of screens. Maybe Apple should limit the total number of screens to 2, so everyone would do the same? (sarcasm). The fact is users can have a lot of different screens full of apps, and having to constantly scroll through them is time consuming. Maybe if it wasnt so cumbersome to constantly switch contexts to move apps around anytime you want to (see point 1), it would be less of an inconvenience.

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot

4) agreed.

The fact is, IMHO, Android is a free for all mess when it comes to the system UI. And Apple seems to be at the other end of the spectrum. I think with a maturing market which is already familiar with iOS's system UI, it is IMHO time for it to evolve to make it easier to do some of the basic things. (FYI, i also thought Palm's webOS cards UI for app switching was a lot more user friendly than Apple's implementation at the time, they finally implemented it on iOS instead of sticking with the nonsensical un-user-friendly way they had done it before).

Why is it fine? There are two 'functions' in edit mode; moving and deleting apps. And i have presented ways in which they can be accomplished without a 'context switch'. So what functional or aesthetic purpose does the second context have? It is superfluous, ugly and most importantly not user friendly.

The second context's purpose is providing homescreen configurability.

Having this happen during regular use would be incredibly annoying at best (it's annoying enough when touching an icon for too long accidentally puts the screen into wobble mode), and tremendously confusing for casual users at worst.

This is not a function I can imagine anybody possibly needing on a daily basis. You download an app, you decide where you want it, and you move it there. End of configuration.

I see your suggestion as creating new problematic approach to "solving" a problem that has already been solved long ago.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

iPhone have come with multitouch support since the beginning, yet none of the OS's/System's UI seems to utilize it. Why is resizing the icons with 'pinch to zoom', on the home screen a terrible idea? People do it with almost every app that supports zooming/scaling. In the 'Pictures' app, Safari, Mail, etc.... there's no 'edit' mode when you want to zoom/scale, why force this 'special'/'exception' on the system?

You've got it completely backwards.

Pinch-zooming is a "special function" that exists where it makes sense in context. I don't see it in Weather, Stocks, Music, Clock, Messages, or even Videos.
Implementing it outside of a specified "edit" mode for the homescreen means that "ordinary" people will *constantly* be invoking it without meaning to, or even knowing what the hell just happened.

If you need a zoom function for the OS in general, it's already there, under the Accessibility settings.

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

Well, if you see no point for resizable icons, doesnt mean that everyone else who uses the product is of the same persuasion.

This is obviously true, given your posts in this thread. How would resizable icons on the homescreen be useful to you? (I'm not talking about widgets: I'm talking about actual, resized plain icons.)

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

It's great that you took the time to squeeze your 100 apps onto a couple of screens. Maybe Apple should limit the total number of screens to 2, so everyone would do the same? (sarcasm). The fact is users can have a lot of different screens full of apps, and having to constantly scroll through them is time consuming. Maybe if it wasnt so cumbersome to constantly switch contexts to move apps around anytime you want to (see point 1), it would be less of an inconvenience.

It would be really cumbersome to "constantly switch contexts" indeed. Why on earth would anybody want to do so, let alone have the "woah, I just moved shit around" mode active all the time???

I do agree that having six screens full of apps is problematic, and scrolling back and forth through them is really time consuming. That's why everybody cried Hallelujah when Apple finally gave us folders, and why Apple even gave us multi-page folders in iOS 7.

They give you tools to get organized: it's not their problem if you don't sit down to use them. Which you only need to do once. Maybe twice, until you get your organization worked out.

It's annoying that they took so long to implement this; by the time folders came around, many of us already had Home-Screen Overload.

(Pro tip: They even let you do this from iTunes, which may or may not be less cumbersome for larger numbers of apps.)

Originally Posted by Hawkeye_a

The fact is, IMHO, Android is a free for all mess when it comes to the system UI. And Apple seems to be at the other end of the spectrum. I think with a maturing market which is already familiar with iOS's system UI, it is IMHO time for it to evolve to make it easier to do some of the basic things. (FYI, i also thought Palm's webOS cards UI for app switching was a lot more user friendly than Apple's implementation at the time, they finally implemented it on iOS instead of sticking with the nonsensical un-user-friendly way they had done it before).

Actually, the new way of switching apps is EXACTLY identical to the way it was before.
The only change is that it LOOKS different.*

*) and that you have a new method of quitting apps, but that is mostly placebo bunk, anyway, and may actually result in HIGHER power consumption in some cases.

The iOS home screen has essentially been unchanged since it was introduced in 2007 (7 years ago). Apart from the ghastly thematic change last year, its UI has not budged. Maybe its time evolve a little? ...

IMO you are simply "solving" things here that don't need to be solved. I don't see any issue with the jiggling icons, and while re-sizing icons is a nice feature, I don't see it as crucial either.

Folders more than one level deep means you need a proper file system, so I don't agree there either because tacking on a file system is really a step backwards, not forwards. There also seems to be a couple of points wherein your idea would leave us flicking through endless lists, which is tedious and again, I disagree.